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Sundays With Strangers

A weird thing I’ve noticed is that at the mere mention of a tiny house, people will swoon and get their phones out to take photos, but if you mention a tiny apartment, those same people start backing towards the door and fanning back issues of “Architectural Digest” as if to repel the foul odors of squalor and poverty. And yet, if you ask me, the tiny apartment is at least as good as, if not better than, a tiny house. I mean, I love tiny houses, but when you see a picture of one, they’re usually in some remote wooded area where you just know you can’t get food delivered and whatever phone signal you manage to get will take ten minutes to load a simple low-def nude from your ex. Tiny houses are in places where you live if you want to stay home and nest all the time, but tiny houses aren’t really built for nesting, unless you’re literally a tiny bird.

This tiny apartment in Dupont, however, is a perfectly fine little studio that also happens to be close to everything. It’s a great place to live if all you do is come home and pass out, but at the same time, it’s still bigger than a tiny house, so you can do some nesting, if the urge strikes you. I mean, yeah, it’s one room, but aren’t we living in an age of minimalism? Have you, like every single one of my friends, done that Marie Kondo thing where you throw out 90% of your stuff? An apartment like this is the logical extension of that philosophy. And it really is liberating, at least until you spend an hour looking for the charger for your camera and realize you threw it out because it “doesn’t give you joy.”

Let’s take a look. It’s one big room. I mean, what do you want from me? It’s a room. That’s what a studio is. A room. But if you’ve ever lived in a big apartment, you know that you really only spend time in one or, at max, two rooms. I used to live alone in a large two-bedroom (ah, when Shaw was cheap!), and I set foot in the living room maybe once a month, and in the second bedroom like once a year. In these pictures, the apartment’s furnished with a big bed and a bulky sofa, but in an apartment like this, if you went with more streamlined furniture, the space would seem so much larger. Plus, no one needs a big bed. Going into someone’s tiny living space, whether it’s a studio or a bedroom, and seeing that 80% of the space is being taken up by a king-sized bed, is the most irritating thing in the world. No one is having that many orgies. A single person with anything larger than a twin is the equivalent of driving around in a double-wide Hummer. I feel very strongly about this. (Obviously.)

The kitchen is located on “the wall.” It’s very fresh and new, with blonde wood cabinetry and space-efficient appliances; you could also use some of those cupboards for shoe/book/VHS tape storage. There’s a long walk-in closet that you could also use to maximize your space; I would have this closet packed so tight that you’d have to grease up the vacuum cleaner just to pull it out of there. The bathroom is unexpectedly classy, with a claw-foot tub and a pedestal-style basin, and plenty of room. Somehow, even a decent-sized apartment can feel claustrophobic if it comes with one of those postage-stamp-sized New York City bathrooms where your knees are touching the door when you sit on the toilet; this place doesn’t have that problem at all. The building offers a bunch of amenities, too, including a huge roof deck with a bar. This is quite a perk when you consider that winter apparently isn’t a thing anymore; in three years you’re going to be having Christmas barbecues up here. Of course, the best thing about a tiny apartment is the tiny price tag; you can pay it off in a couple years and then you just have the $330 monthly condo fees to pay. You know what that means – showing up drunk to your performance reviews, because who cares?